goio's great community

[Imagine]

3.
the morg post is a joke.
guys are guys, girls are girls. It is natural for us to band together, because we have more common interests with our own sex than with the other sex. I´m sorry if it offended you, but it´s just a joke about making a group for "real men". We arent against any girls wanting to play with eachother, we just thought it was witty to comment on it and make a satiric joke about it. I cannot say anything than smile at it and start joking with some of us. I know you rydr people like to joke about me forexample

Sorry Skrim, but that's a load of crap. That was made in obvious retaliation to some strangely perceived slight, something created to basically disrespect a group trying to do do something together, and has no place on these forums, Pit material or not. I do hope there, at the least, was an apology for posting it.

[HamsterIV]

I would be lying if I said I never heard this harassment of female players ingame, but to be negatively compared to DotA in this regard is pretty harsh. When I do hear it in GOI it is usually when a woman uses voice chat for the first time in a lobby, which is usually responded to by "there are no women on the internet" and various other insults. I accept it can be hard to open your mouth when you know it is going to invite trolling, but if people don't get used to hearing female voices in their games the novelty of harassing the one or that popup will not go away.

I am not an expert on the matter, so take that advice with a grain of salt. Also if we can't get the trolls to identify themselves how can the community band together to run them out of town? I do love flying as the munker ally to a troll ship.

[Lydia Litvyak]

However i have seen countless of situations where a player somehow provokes another player. Who responds with racial or  sexist slander.

The most I have ever done is told people to change their loadouts. If using voice chat and telling crew members what they need to bring while female is so rude that it warrants this sort of attack then I do not know what to say.

I would be lying if I said I never heard this harassment of female players ingame, but to be negatively compared to DotA in this regard is pretty harsh.

And yet my experiences here have been worse than my experiences in dota. I do not know what am I supposed to do here. Should I just keep quiet and not voice my discomfort because it would make us look bad, or because it would hurt the community's ego?

[Dutch Vanya]

Also if we can't get the trolls to identify themselves how can the community band together to run them out of town? I do love flying as the munker ally to a troll ship.

People say mining your ally is trolling, but most of the time it is vigilante justice.

On the topic at hand, it's awful that you ladies still have to experience this kind of treatment. I really want to believe that the goi community is better than this, or at least better than other games. I personally have rarely witnessed it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. However i don't think the people that exhibit this kind of behavior are not really part of our community, and in goi community really means something, we act like one, it isn't just a word to describe the people that play the game. I hope the mods having powers will be enough to deal with these issues, as it will be a long long time before we can change human tendencies to be terrible to each other.

[Thomas]

It was mentioned earlier, but all reports are handled by a human and taken very seriously. We do have a protocol to follow, so in most cases you won't see players banned immediately. We like to give players a chance to correct their behavior and become good members of the community. If issues occur again, punishments are likely to follow dependent on the severity and number of occurrences.

If you are having issues and need it taken care of immediately, especially incidents involving voice chat, contact a moderator or CA. Only Mods can take action, but CA's are able to get in contact with Mods easier to bring them into the game when possible. They can also act as an unbiased observer to an incident and help clarify what has happened. To be fair to everyone involved, Moderators need to have a good understanding of the situation before taking action; so be patient and help them understand if they arrive after it occurred. If a CA, Mod, or Dev is present during an incident and not doing anything, make sure they're actually paying attention to the incident. Many times players tab out, leave their computer, etc. Sometimes they're just zoned out and focusing on something else (teamspeak, skype, muble, music, etc)

[Keyvias]

@Lydia,
I can't speak for the community, but I can speak for the dev staff. We would never ask you to be quiet and I'll be honest how we look takes such a far back seat to how our players feel. As I said I welcome any discussion on the topic.

Interesting side note: you have one of the highest report to capture ratios. (Basically how many of your reports turn into warnings and/or bans.) So thank you for the effective reports.

@Topic
Also everyone has had a different experience in the game. Some people haven't seen much sexism, some have seen way too much, some have seen provoked trolling and others have seen psychotic attacks as soon as the mic goes on. This doesn't mean anyone's experiences are right/wrong, but it is important to note due to different playtimes, styles, and personalities we find ourselves in different situations and with different experiences.
If someone is offering what they have seen that isn't to say what you've seen is incorrect and vice versa.
If I said I don't see a lot of sexism, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it probably means my green name makes a lot of jerks shut up.
So when talking about your own experiences or someone else's let's keep in mind that we all have lived amazing different lives and had amazingly different game experiences.
If you haven't experienced sexism, that's great! But how many female players have you interacted with, were they forced to do something special to avoid sexist comments, did you do anything special to stop someone who start making sexist comments. Let's focus on the fact that everyone here at their base does not want people's feelings to be hurt.

No one in here is voting for more sexist comments and if you are feel free to raise your hand so I can give a swift kick.

So lets take a look at the most important facts:
People are experiencing sexism. We are not saying everyone is doing sexism, but if someone they have experienced it, then it exists.
What options do we have that we are not taking advantage of. From a dev, mod, and few kind members of the community standpoint.

No I do not propose that we solve all sexism and gender issues on the internet, but if there is something I, the team, or us having this discussion can do better, I would be happy to hear it.

[B'Elanna]

I have issue with brushing things like this off by calling it trolling and it's not the anonymity that makes people say these things either, and I have a very good video about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KHEkR5yb9A

Most of you won't watch but it's really well explained.

[HamsterIV]

And yet my experiences here have been worse than my experiences in dota. I do not know what am I supposed to do here. Should I just keep quiet and not voice my discomfort because it would make us look bad, or because it would hurt the community's ego?

You should speak your mind and be harsh when you feel it is justified. My ego is bruised by the comparison but it will recover. I am proud to be part of this community, I proudly tell people it is one of the nicest places on the internet. I spend more time here than I do on some of my other hobby forums because it is so nice. I got a little defensive when I read your words, but they are as valid as my own. Perhaps a little more so since I have never played DotA and know it only by reputation. For any offense I have given, I am sorry.

[Andika]

What I honestly don't get is why, whenever female players decide to start up a female-focused group or clan, it always turns into such an ISSUE in the community (in any game i've been in so far), whereas if male players come up with a male-focused clan or group, everyone simply wishes them good luck and lets them be and have fun together. Nobody starts discussions about sexism in those threads, nobody makes fun of those male-perspective groups/clans, and nobody needs to lock those threads in the end.

In fact it is so much of a custom in the world of the internet to create male-focused groups based on male ideals and carrying male names that we do not even anymore recognize them as gendered. Just think about all the popular clan names that start like "sons of blah blah", "brothers of blah blah", "men of whatever", "kings of this and that" and so on.  You might say that those groups are neutral in the sense that they welcome female players too, but in fact most female players find it hard to identify with a group whose very name excludes them by definition.

Note that I am not criticizing these group names, I am aware of how customary they are and I am also aware that those who founded them had no intentions of excluding women, they were simply following a widely accepted tradition.

What I want to point out is that having a gaming group like "girls of icarus" is not, in any way, different from calling a clan "boys of icarus". Both are gendered in a way, and both exclude a group of people at least in their names, though neither would be totally exclusive if someone was willing and able to adopt the perspective of the group. Yet, the difference is that a "boys of icarus" forum thread would never have generated this kind of backlash that people experienced after suggesting a "girls of icarus" gaming group.  So then why not treat a female-focused gaming group in the same neutral, customary way as we are treating all of the millions of male-focused ones? Wish them good luck, welcome their group to the community, and that's it all.

Also, I am one of those players who have simply stopped using microphone even though I have one and could use it in most cases. Even with all the support and neutral treatment female players nowadays receive from many guys in games, it is actually still better to be the all-time forever "silent dude with the female character" than the occasionally, once or twice harrassed "stupid b*tch". There is simply a tangible difference in how people treat you, what offences they tell you, how much they listen to your opinion and so on. In simple terms, it is usually fun to be the silent dude, and it is often not fun to be the talking female player. I wanna have fun when I play computer games. And I don't mind guys calling me a "dude". It so doesn't matter to me.

[Omniraptor]

This is a really confusing/complicated issue, make sure you think about it before you post.

First off, It's pretty sad seeing a double standard like this. Like, nobody complained when Polaris announced they were only recruiting russian-speaking people. Nobody barged into the recruitment thread making dumb jokes about vodka and bears, or angry rants about Putin's foreign policy. It was just a group of people wanting to play together.

1. Anyway, regarding everyday garden-variety in-game harassment, i.e. unwelcome references to any player's gender, threats, etc. It's good to keep reporting that stuff. However, silent bans are a bad deterrent to assholes who haven't spoken up yet, and when it comes to catcalls... one is too many. So we really need to stop the harassment proactively, instead of just with retroactive invisible bans.

This might be a bad idea, but IMO it's also super important to call out harassment as the BS it is, loudly and publicly. This is directed at everyone, mostly dudes because face it, we're the majority here. If we, the (hopefully decent) majority make it clear that harassing people for any reason (including the sound of their perecived gender) is bad, it will create a chilling effect and stop the harassment before it is said. More fun for everyone except the harassers.

Again, there needs to be more work done here, to PROACTIVELY prevent bad stuff from happening. Skrim mentioned a wall of shame idea, that could maybe work, we'd have to talk about it more.

2. Forum denizens. Mezhu's a great guy. He also thought that "borg" was bad enough that it deserved its own satirical parody "morg". That's a little weird, because I don't see anything in "borg" bad enough to be worth mocking, but evidently mezhu disagrees. I'd like to know why. He doesn't deserve to be yelled at like that. I really don't get the joke either, but that's no excuse for making graphic references to mezhu's genitals. Not cool.


To people saying "trolling/harassment/sexism is a bigger problem than GOI", I say that's BS. Torrential rain is also a bigger problem than my house, but it doesn't keep me from having a roof and staying dry and cozy despite it. We have power to change this community for the better, and we should use it. The MUSE team seem to be onboard with the general purpose, certainly.

[Lydia Litvyak]

@Lydia,
I can't speak for the community, but I can speak for the dev staff. We would never ask you to be quiet and I'll be honest how we look takes such a far back seat to how our players feel. As I said I welcome any discussion on the topic.

Interesting side note: you have one of the highest report to capture ratios. (Basically how many of your reports turn into warnings and/or bans.) So thank you for the effective reports.

I have every faith that you the rest of muse are doing your best to prevent harassment and keep it under control. I do think a notification or something when reports get handled could be nice, though: it would remove the illusion that nothing ever happens once people are reported.

As a side note, I am not completely happy with the recent changes to the report system. In my experience reporting someone for something tends to provoke an outburst, and what's more if I am reporting them for something they said to me more often than not they can tell it is me reporting them. But I will defer to other people's judgement on that.

This might be a bad idea, but IMO it's also super important to call out harassment as the BS it is, loudly and publicly. This is directed at everyone, mostly dudes because face it, we're the majority here. If we, the (hopefully decent) majority make it clear that harassing people for any reason (including the sound of their perecived gender) is bad, it will create a chilling effect and stop the harassment before it is said. More fun for everyone except the harassers.

This is really important. Many men are doubtful when I tell them that harassers will listen to random men telling them to stop over the woman they are harassing, but trust me, it is true. I mean, if somebody disrespects women so much that they feel entitled to make obscene comments about us, do you really expect them to care when we tell them we don't like it? On top of that, when a man attacks a woman and the other men in the lobby don't say anything about it, he takes it as tacit approval. He feels safe engaging in that kind of behavior, while the woman feels (rightfully) that she cannot rely on anyone around her to stop these things from happening.
And even aside from that, speaking up when you see this sort of thing happen tells the victim that they are not alone and that the people around them have their back.

There are people in the goio community who are good about speaking up when this happens, and I really appreciate it. But it needs to be everyone, not just some.

[Imagine]

2. Forum denizens. Mezhu's a great guy. He also thought that "borg" was bad enough that it deserved its own satirical parody "morg". That's a little weird, because I don't see anything in "borg" bad enough to be worth mocking, but evidently mezhu disagrees. I'd like to know why. He doesn't deserve to be yelled at like that. I really don't get the joke either, but that's no excuse for making graphic references to mezhu's genitals. Not cool.

I've made this known a few people, but might as well state it here: Until that is resolved, I'm going to do the only thing I can, which is refuse to cast any match Mezhu's in.

[sparklerfish]

There was a brief period of time when I didn't have a microphone, and honestly it was sort of a relief because I was spared the "OMG YOU'RE A GIRL?" and the ensuing harassment/patronizing remarks.  It definitely is a problem with being a girl on the internet, and especially in gaming communities, in general, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to tackle the problem here or that such attempts are futile.  I don't really know what the solution is other than reporting/blocking, though...

[B'Elanna]

Mezhu's a great guy.

The first time I noticed him was when he appeared in a lobby I was getting harassed in.
I don't want to go into the details but it wasn't just the usual (YES. sadly there is a "usual"), it was particularly sexually aggressive and I was at the brink of tears, and thank god Mezhu was there.
He was kind enough to tell me that it was my fault for behaving the way I did and that my "cuteness" invited this abuse.
And man did I learn form it, who would have thought.
What a guy.

I'm not out to hurt him, but god I don't care about his feeling getting hurt when his "über ironic" 3deep5you joke didn't get the response he wished for.
If you try to be "socially critical" you invite a discussion.
I didn't. I just invited people into a mumble server one day a month.
All I need to do to invite all this debate is challenge your delusion about equality.
And patriarchy has a very fragile ego it seems when even suggesting I want female company feels like a threat.

(even though I quoted Omniraptor, this is just an elaboration of ONE aspect he mentioned.
NOT answering him, attacking him or correcting him. It's not a personal interaction.
I hope you understand that Omniraptor. I do appreciate a lot you say! I really mean that.
This is the only thing you said so far that I disagree with.)

As a side note, I am not completely happy with the recent changes to the report system. In my experience reporting someone for something tends to provoke an outburst, and what's more if I am reporting them for something they said to me more often than not they can tell it is me reporting them. But I will defer to other people's judgement on that.

I really agree actually!
The problem with reporting people:

• User Interface

The UI makes me oblivious to the match starting.
I've been interrupted by starting matches and had to start over from scratch a lot.
Sometimes I didn't attempt a second time and that is a shame.
Could there be a "drafts" folder, or could at least reopening the report UI show the last typed not-sent message? That would really change the ratio of my harassment/report ratio.

• Immediate Notification

As Lydia mentioned, since we're often the only ones taking offence (except for when we play with friends in the same lobby that support us) it's often really obvious that the only report filed is from us, and even if it's not just one they still know it's because of us and it makes them become really uncomfortable towards us, and often it's worse than just "getting over it" meaning, brush it off, feel like shit and just try to forget it happened.
Solutions to his could be a few: showing up that you have been reported only when relogging, making it an e-mail notice only, etc.
But I REALLY would appreciate it being changed. In any way really.

• The "why bother" factor.

Again Lydia already mentioned that.
Some notice, even a default mail would be better than nothing. Not automated. Sent really whenever some issue has been addressed in ANY way.
The "discretion" law you enforce, protects the abuser and silent discipline to the point of not even admitting something has been done about a problem that was reported, deleting forum posts that perpetuate sexism, telling women to just block people. That all doesn't make it go away.
It hides the fact that it happens.
[/list]
Additionally!!!

• "Just block them"

The reason I rarely block:
I want to know. I can't just ignore it.
I am not the only one they are gonna be horrible towards.
It's important to that I know if they are attacking other women. And ignoring them doesn't make them go away. It makes them wander off with not a care in the world, because they achieved what they wanted. They made the bitch shut up.
[/list]

[Omniraptor]

It's completely possible for two people to form different impressions of mezhu, and both could well be true. For example usually (sort of) friendly, but on some days (and with some people) I snap.  Mezhu was like that once, perhaps he's like that all the time and I didn't notice (I probably wouldn't notice anyway because I'm not a target for this).

I really don't want to discuss mezhu like this, would rather let him speak for himself.

Also, iirc the devs have mentioned in a fireside they're planning to implement a randomized delay between report and notification, so people won't lash out against the perceived reporter.